Land for life

HRN, in conjunction with Eva Perroni and Future Feeders, is proud to present LAND FOR LIFE.

Land for Life is the second in a series of talks based on land, economy, indigeneity and social ecology. The first event was Land Cultures: Aboriginal economies and permaculture futures.

About the speakers

Rebecca Phillips is a proud Pangerang and Djaara woman. She believes the preservation and revival of her cultures is important to uphold what her ancestors paved the way for and what we must build on for future generations. Bec was an active and valued member on the Dja Dja Wurrung Negotiation Team, negotiating a Recognition Settlement Agreement with the State of Victoria and her People. She currently sits on the Dhelkunya Dja (Healing land) Land Management Board, setting the direction for the Management of the 6 Parks and reserves to be jointly managed by the State Government and Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation. Bec has been involved in the revival of her traditional language (Dja Dja Wurrung), through Djalli Bunjil (Language Knowledge) and is reviving traditional and modern day, songs and dances.

As the permaculture co-originator, David Holmgren is a leading thinker, writer and teacher on how societies and communities can become more resilient with a lower impact on the planet. Together with his partner Su Dennett, David lives and works at Melliodora, in Hepburn, one of Australia’s best-known permaculture demonstration sites.

David has spent a lifetime developing a sustainable and fulfilling way of living. His latest book, RetroSuburbia, shows how Australian suburbs can be transformed to become productive and resilient in an energy decent future. It focuses on what can be done by an individual at the household level.

Eric Holt-Giménez is an agroecologist, political economist, lecturer and author. As the current Executive Director of Food First, Eric’s work informs and amplifies the voices of social movements fighting for food justice and sovereignty across the globe. Food First’s frontline publishing approach brings researchers, writers, and social movements together in a collective effort to amplify the voices of frontline communities fighting for food systems transformation. Food First generates research and education for action, bringing the perspective of community-based struggles to broader development and policy debates.

In his latest book, A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism, Holt-Giménez asserts that the food system cannot be transformed without addressing the economic system of capitalism. Using the wide-angle lens of political economy, Holt-Giménez delves into the economic and political context of the current corporate food regime, exploring the commoditisation of food and land as well as issues of power, privilege, and exploitation across the food chain.

About the MC

 

Eva Perroni is an Australian-based researcher and writer reporting on the frontline of food and farming issues. Her expertise lies in telling stories that delve into the hidden fabric of our food system: exploring the ways food is produced, distributed, exchanged and consumed and its impacts on the environment, global health, communities and culture.

Eva is committed to food justice and promoting solutions that pave the way for ecologically sustainable and socially just societies, and is an advocate for life-enhancing farming methods and amplifying the voices of community-based movements and organizations working to effect change in the food system.

The event will include an update from Tammi Jonas, the President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA).

Former vegetarian academic Tammi Jonas is now the meatsmith at Jonai Farms, where she and her family raise pastured rare-breed pigs and cattle, transforming whole carcasses into a range of fresh cuts, smallgoods, charcuterie and salumi in their on-farm butcher’s shop.

Together with AFSA, Tammi is working towards everyone’s right to nutritious and culturally-appropriate food grown and distributed in ethical and ecologically sound ways, and our right to collectively determine our own food and agriculture systems.

Tickets

Tickets for Land for Life are $5 and available at the door only. Please bring a plate of supper to share.

This exciting event is a fundraiser for Food First.

October Culture Club (plus a whole heap more)

Culture Club has another special guest coming to share knowledges. Introducing Monique Miller. Monique will be discussing her ideas on fermentation and presenting a workshop:

Saturday 6th of October, 9.30am - 12.30pm 

Senior Citizen's Room (behind the Daylesford Town Hall).

This is a FREE event open to all community members.

Monique is a generalist. She divides her time between bush land management, teaching edible weed & fermentation workshops and facilitating the permaculture design course at CERES in Brunswick East.

She has been teaching fermentation for more than four years, teaching from Confest to Bairnsdale.
On her days off she enjoys cleaning her house (no, really) and drinking a gratuitous amount of tea while gardening.

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Thank you to everyone who came along to September's Culture Club, especially Nicole Azzopardi, who so very generously shared her story, recipes and ferments with us. If you would like to order Nicole's book, The Alchemy Cookbook, please let us know as we are putting in a bulk order.

Have a look at these beautiful photos taken by the ever-wondrous Mara Ripani at the September Culture Club:

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This is a reminder that you need to book your place out the upcoming Equinox dinner by this coming Thursday!!

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On Sunday October 21, we are organising a special event called Land for Life at the Daylesford Town Hall. A conversation with permaculture co-originator David Holmgren (author of RetroSuburbia) and US food movement scholar-activist Eric Holt-Gimenez (author of A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism) as they offer insights into how to develop a deep engagement and long-term commitment to regenerative and just economies. More details to come...

Bruce Pascoe and David Holmgren to meet and share knowledges

Award-winning Australian writer, editor and anthologist Bruce Pascoe is leading a movement of researchers who are rewriting Aboriginal history in Australia. On Thursday April 7 2016 Pascoe will visit Daylesford for the below free events.

• 2pm tour of Dja Dja Wurrung tools at the Daylesford Museum 
• 3pm reading by Bruce of his young adult fiction at the Daylesford Library 
• 4pm planting of murnongs (yam daisies) at the Daylesford Library community garden 
• 7.30pm in conversation with David Holmgren for the event: Land Cultures: Aboriginal economies and permaculture futures at the Daylesford Town Hall

Poster by Ian Robertson

The evening event will commence with a  Dja Dja Wurrung smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country. A Hepburn Shire Council representative will present a progress report on the Shire’s recognition and reconciliation projects. Pascoe’s keynote address will be followed by a response
from David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept and Hepburn Springs resident,
before opening the discussion to the floor. Supper will be provided by Hepburn Relocalisation Network (for a gold coin donation).

All events are free and people are encouraged to attend any or all of the events.

Bruce Pascoe has a Bunurong and Tasmanian heritage. In his latest book, Dark Emu: black seeds, Pascoe shows that the Aboriginal history we were taught in school — that indigenous Australians were chancey hunter-gatherer nomads — is a fiction. Using point of contact journals by European explorers, Pascoe demonstrates the extent of the ecologically sensitive agricultural practices that existed in Australia pre-1788, and shows that Aboriginal Australians were possibly the world’s first bread makers, preceding the Egyptians by at least 18,000 years.

If you’re going to participate in one significant cultural and learning day this year, this may well be it. Come and join the discussion and understand how the foods of Australia pre-1788 may become the foods of a climate-altered 21st century economy that acknowledge and celebrate the past.

The day is presented by Hepburn Relocalisation Network with the generous assistance and funding of Hepburn Shire Council.
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For all media enquiries please contact Patrick Jones: 0418 523 308 permapoesis@gmail.com

Reminder & Retrofitting

Hi all, this is a reminder that if you're interested in doing the beer-making workshop this weekend, please let us know ASAP as we don't yet have the numbers.

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There was a great article in The Age a few days ago about retrofitting the suburbs that focused on David Holmgren's vision for what the 'burbs can one day be again:

"...places where people can grow more of their own food, work at home and meet their needs while consuming far fewer resources...You can minimise your costs by slowing down, going fewer places and being more productive with the underutilised fixed assets you've already got."

For further reading, the journo, Michael Green has some other interesting articles on his website.

If you're interested in reading David's full report, Retrofitting the suburbs for the energy descent future, you can download it from the Simplicity Institute website.

You can also watch a fantastic talk that David gave on the same subject at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne: